[Rarebooks] fa: MEDICAL EXTRACTS - Robert Thornton - 4 vols. 1796-97 w/ COLOR PLATES

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Auction ending Sunday, Oct. 5. More details and photos can be found at  
the URL below...

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZarch_in_la

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Robert John Thornton:] Medical Extracts: On the Nature of Health,  
with Practical Observations: And the Laws of the Nervous and Fibrous  
Systems. London: Printed for for J. Johnson... 1796-1797. A New  
Edition. Four volumes, 8vo, half calf and early/period marbled boards,  
gilt-stamped spines and morocco labels...

This "new edition" is considerably enhanced and expanded from the  
single-volume first edition published in 1794. With eight engraved  
plates, of which seven are hand-colored and four are folding... A  
landmark of late eighteenth-century medicine...

Apart from its obvious medical and scientific interest, the work is a  
fascinating resource for any student of the history and culture of the  
period. In his section on Hunger, for example, Thornton includes a  
lengthy (75+ pages) account of the MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and Capt.  
William Bligh's remarkable voyage to Timor in the ship's launch  
(Bligh's own account had been published only four years before). On  
another note, there is evidence that this work played a role in  
inspiring Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, via her husband Percy: "Robert  
Thornton's Medical Extracts, a medical work known to have been ordered  
by Percy Shelley from his bookseller in July 1812, ... includes a  
lengthy passage on methods suitable for persons being "recalled to  
life" from "the silent mansions of the tomb," and mentions the  
theories of Cullen and Boerhaave on the causes of death from  
asphyxiation by hanging. Interestingly, another Shelley critic has  
noted that Waldman's assessment in Frankenstein of modern philosophers  
as the successors to the alchemists bears similarities to comments  
appearing elsewhere in Thornton's book"...